Then, as his mother merely inclined her head, he lifted the child in his arms and held her close to the proud lips which touched the white forehead coldly, while a frown darkened the lady's face, for notwithstanding that Bessie was so young and Neil a mere boy, she disapproved of the liking between them lest it should interfere with Blanche. But Neil did not fancy Blanche, and he did like Bessie, and took her in to dinner, holding her little hand while she skipped and jumped at his side and looked up in his face with those great blue eyes which moved him strangely now, and which in the after time were to bewilder and intoxicate and awaken in him all the better impulses of his nature and then become the sweetest and the saddest memory of his life.
"It is so nice to go to dinner with big people and have all you want to eat, isn't it?" she said to him, as she settled herself in her chair and adjusted her napkin with all the precision of a grown person.
"Of course it's nice," Neil replied, never dreaming what a real dinner was to this child who had so often dined on a bit of bread, a few shriveled grapes, a fig or two and some raisins, trying hard to keep her tears back when the bread was dry and scanty and she was very hungry.
She was very happy with Neil at her side, and she laughed and chatted with him and told him of Stoneleigh and the white rabbit old Anthony was rearing for him when he came at Christmas as he had promised to do.
Dinner being over, Archie, who did not smoke, excused himself from the gentlemen who did, and taking Bessie with him, sauntered off into the grounds till he reached the seat where he had found his uncle. Sitting down upon it and taking Bessie in his lap he told her of his good fortune and showed her the bank-note.
"Oh, I am so glad!" the child exclaimed; "for now we are real, and not impostors, are we?"
"Not in the sense of not having any money," he replied, but there was a sad, anxious expression on his face, as he looked down upon the little girl beside him, and thought of the future and what it might bring to her.
"Bessie," he said, at last, "how would you like to live at Stoneleigh altogether, and not be traveling about?"
"Oh, I'd like it so much," Bessie said, "but I am afraid mamma would not. She hates Stoneleigh, it's so dull."